If we have weather like that on November 25 do you think 86% of the seats at Gillette Stadium will be empty?

Of course not! And one reason is that people spend a lot of money to buy tickets to see the Patriots. Many people have already thought about how this reasoning could be applied to voting. Read about some of them at http://www.whynot.net/ideas/1352.

3 comments:

Something doesn't feel right about paying people to vote but I certainly understand the cost-benefit analysis one can make in choosing to spend their time differently. Tough dilemma. I think a better approach, at least initially, is to make it more convenient. That likely would manifest itself in something like what Oregon has done with voting by mail. Or instead of voting by mail, having elections (outside of those constitutionally mandated to be on the first Tuesday) on weekends when people have much more time and taking a half hour to go vote is less an inconvenience than screwing up your commute on a Tuesday morning or rushing over on the way home.

I agree that there's something not quite OK with paying people for doing something that they should be doing anyway - in Australia they fine you if you don't vote, but that has it's own set of flaws. People die for the right to vote in other countries... Election Day should be a PAID HOLIDAY. I also agree that no one should have to stress about how they're going to make it to vote either before work (and worry about getting in trouble for being late, and loosing pay if you're hourly, etc) or on the way home before the polls close. Make voting EASIER and more accessible and maybe more people will actually do it. This is the last place where exercising one's right to vote should be a struggle.

Maybe a better example than a Patriots game is all the people who took a lot more time than the time it takes to vote to watch the Red Sox ride through Boston on Duck Boats. Sure, many of those people aren't Boston residents. But even if it rained there would have still been plenty of people willing to get wet to see 30 seconds of Jason Varitek and friends.